Life is often unpredictable, especially in troublesome times. Add to this that man hasn’t a clue as to what the Lord may be doing in the affairs of men, and one can become quite discouraged and inward. Nevertheless, the advice of the Teacher is: “In the morning sow your seed, and in the evening do not withhold your hand…” In other words, don’t be discouraged by what you see and hear, but keep on keeping on! When you are young trust in the Lord and honor him with what you do, and when you are old don’t give up, keep trusting in the Lord, because one simply doesn’t know what will be successful. Perhaps what is done in the days of our youth will spring up to glorify God, or it may be what one does when he is old and grey. Perhaps, by the mercy of the Lord, we’ll be able to glorify our God in our labor all our lives (Ecclesiastes 11:6). We simply don’t know!
Indeed, the light (of life) is sweet and pleasant to experience, when we place our lives in the Lord’s hands and let him work out the details (Ecclesiastes 11:7). We have our command to do onto others as the Lord has always done onto us, and, if we allow our lives to reflect his glory by being generous to our fellow man, the Lord will be our supply in due season.
Indeed, if we are blessed with a long life, we need to rejoice in the Lord in all our days, for the time comes when we’ll be unable to work any longer (John 9:4). This life is meaningless in that all that we labor to possess can be used only here. It has no value for us after death. Life deceives us in that time passes too quickly, and, before we are truly aware of it, it is too late to honor God (Ecclesiastes 11:8).
The Teacher’s command for the young to rejoice has a touch of irony laced within it. We are told to “walk in the ways of our heart” and “rejoice in our youth” (Ecclesiastes 11:9; cp. 2:24; 3:12, 22; 5:18; 9:7). Yet, elsewhere we warned not to seek after our own hearts and our own eyes (Numbers 15:39). So, there’s a bit of irony here that may have gone unnoticed in a cursory read, if it were not for the last part of the verse: “but know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment” (Ecclesiastes 11:9). So, yes, the Lord wants us to enjoy our lives, but not to be selfish. Nothing in this life can be removed, as though it could be of value to us after our death. What is here, stays here. In this sense, life is profitless, the things here are meaningless elsewhere. All is vanity (Ecclesiastes 1:2)! While we certainly can’t take it as literally true, the sense is that the commodity, upon which we calculate the value of all else in this world, is nothing but road pavement in the Kingdom of God (Revelation 21:21). Hence, only the fool would heap to himself in this short life a few small piles of stone or bricks, at the expense of true riches, which would have eventually been given him had he placed his trust in the Lord.
The Teacher concludes by telling us of the necessity of putting away anger from our hearts and evil mischief from our lives, from the dawn of our lives and throughout our youth, which implies from parental discipline into self-discipline. Mankind is in the state of rebellion against God, even from birth. Therefore, we need to take to heart the necessity of trusting God to do good for us, while we do good for others. We need not seek to know the good and evil of a matter (Genesis 3:6) before we conclude that the table of the Lord is good (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8).
Smoodock's Blog 